Tectonics 2022 Artist Profile
James Weeks
James Weeks (*1978) is a composer, conductor and artistic director, based in the North of England.
His music typically explores pared-down musical syntaxes and systems, with particular interests in microtonality and Just Intonation, openness, haptic dimensions of sound and sound-making, and plain-speaking. He also often works with text and with found materials, particularly early music, including an ongoing preoccupation with the music and aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance. His most recent work has focused increasingly on a deeply embodied, phenomenological relationship with the natural world.
His music has been performed and broadcast worldwide, and six portrait discs have been released to date: Summer (another timbre 2021), windfell(another timbre 2019), Mala punica (Winter&Winter, 2017),Signs of Occupation (Métier 2016), mural (confront 2015) and TIDE (Métier 2013). His work also appears on the Wandelweiser, HCR and NMC labels.
Collaborators and other performers of his work have included Quatuor Bozzini, Explore Ensemble, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Ives Ensemble, Plus-Minus, An Assembly, Talea, EXAUDI, Ekmeles, CoMA, Mira Benjamin, Apartment House and Anton Lukoszevieze. His music is published by University of York Music Press.
He is Artistic Director of EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble and Assistant Professor in Composition at Durham University.
Weligwic (Anglo-Saxon, 鈥榩lace of willows鈥�)
Weligwic (Anglo-Saxon, ‘place of willows’) is a sibling of my string quartet Leafleoht (‘Leaf-light’, 2018), and is similarly concerned with images of light and foliage, and our indwelling in the natural world (a theme woven through the mythology of willows since ancient times). The two pieces share many materials and follow a similar three-section structure, but whereas Leafleoht is concerned with daylight and brightness, Weligwic takes place in a half-light and is overcast and subdued in atmosphere. The first section consists of a series of extremely soft, fleeting aural glimpses; in the long central section, the Grove, the continuous, variegated string texture (a matrix through which each player wanders independently) acts as a field of sounds underlying other, intermittent layers; the third section sees a repeated brightening of the atmosphere, as on a cloudy day when the sun nearly breaks through.
